The culture of math classrooms is rapidly changing to become more inclusive. The days of math classrooms revolving around the students who understand while letting the students who don’t understand get left behind are fading into the past. THANK GOODNESS! When I was a kid usually Kevin was the only student called on in math class. Kevin was a kid who got answers in math very quickly and always correctly. Kevin was working to complete 90 math problems on a time test in 60 seconds while I couldn’t even solve them all in 3 minutes. The days of only teaching Kevin while the rest of the class strung along are dwindling!
When kids see answer getting as the way math is done they not only miss out on the connections and the value of knowing how answers are formed but they also start to count themselves out of the game. Kids who can’t get answers quickly begin to not identify as a “math person.” On this topic, enough with this I’m not a math person mentality. Once I knew a teacher who referred to herself as a not mathy math teacher. What sort of message is this sending to students? Anyways… I’ve seen kids as young as kindergarten begin to count themselves out of the math game. That is not ok. Math is so much more than arriving at answers quickly. Please listen to Phil Daro’s Answer Getting in Math for further information against an answer-getting mindset.
How are you working to shift the culture of mathematics within your classroom? Let me know in the comments below!
